The year was 1948, and the car chosen to
pace the 42nd Annual Indianapolis 500 mile race was the Chevrolet Fleetmaster convertible,
beginning a long line of Chevrolet cars at Indy. They returned in 1955 when a Bel Air
convertible did the job. 12 years later the brand new Chevrolet Camaro was chosen as the
pace car, with three-time Indy winner Mauri Rose behind the wheel. It is not known exactly
how many pace cars were built, but the best number is approximately 82 for the race and
100 to perhaps as many as 560 for a special Camaro Pacesetter campaign. The number of race
Camaros comes from a GM inter office memo detailing the specifications for the vehicles to
be used at the race. Here are some excerpts from that memo. The
specifications for the 3 actual pace cars were set forth in Engineering
Build Order #98168.The number of cars built for the
"Pacesetter" campaign is not known and varies widely. Most of the books I have
read put the total number at around 100, including the speedway 81 vehicles. Personally, I
think the number was at least 200. I explain my reasoning here.After the race was over many of our friends in
the Great White North learned of the Pace Car Replicas, and weren't happy to have been
excluded from the promotion, and they apparently knew who to complain to. Chevy ordered up
21 more cars under ordering code 80055, eleven 396-325HP Turbo 400's and ten 350
Powerglides. These were distributed to Canadian dealers who remain unknown.

Camaros
used by the Festival Committee also had this decal. They were gold and black with a clear
center open section that showed the color of the car. This decal was used in both 1967 and
1969. The Festival cars were all 350 automatics and were used in the parades and to carry
the Queen and Queen candidates around the track on Saturday. At the Queen Coronation
Banquet the queen received the keys to car #33 as part of her winnings, including a
matched set of luggage. The original #1 Pace Car used to pace the
Indy 500 in 1967 was driven by racing legend Mauri Rose, and is now owned by Dan Young.
The car is on display periodically at Dan Young Chevrolet in Indianapolis or at the Indy
Speedway Museum. A.J. Foyt won the '67 Indy 500, but
according to USCC member Matt Murphy he turned down the car because it didn't have air
conditioning or a power top! So Chevrolet decided to build another car for A.J., and it
was produced in the same run of cars as the special Canadian built cars. Because they were
all produced together they all got the special clear coat paint and the 0-1 code. In
addition, and they were all built after the race, date code 06C.

It can be difficult to verify the originality of a '67 Pace Car, because unlike
two years later when Chevrolet planned to sell thousands of replicas to the public the '67
cars were all extremely limited production vehicles with most of them to be used
exclusively at the race. However, there are many details common to all pace cars, and can
go a long way towards verifying the real thing. If you do not know how to decode your cowl
tag you may want to visit the Parts section before proceeding. An authentic pace car should have the
following details:

Ermine White paint, code C-1 or 0-1.
"C" specifies Ermine White, while "0" is the code for Special Paint,
in this case a clear coat over the Ermine White. The code appears on Festival and Official
cars. "1" specifies a white convertible top. (There is one documented car coded
0-4, signifying a blue top.)

The car must have all of these features to be an actual Pace Car or replica.
Two of the most important matches are the fleet number and build date, because several
dealers ordered Ermine White SS/RS Camaros with custom blue interiors, repainted the D91
stripe blue, and installed Pace Car decals to imitate the actual replicas. It is not known
how many of these cars were ordered this way, and of course anyone with a '67 Camaro
convertible could make it look like a Pace Car. The other important thing to check for is
the dash (-) coding. Every known, documented Pace Car is dash-coded unless they are 0-1
paint coded. Unless it can be proven otherwise, a C-1 Ermine White convertible with 732
Bright Blue interior trim and SS/RS options without the dash-coding is not a genuine Pace
Car.

This is
an example of a 1967 cowl tag, and it decodes as follows:

Date Code: 03C- Third week of March

R- This code appears only on Norwood cars,
and indicates a special Blue interior. It is in the same location as the mysterious Los
Angeles Code, i.e., J304, indicating the car was the 304th built during the
"J" period.